“My dear Christie,—Hamilton came here on Friday last and stayed till this morning.
He brought me the first news of Nicoll’s marriage, and had himself only that morning
learned by a very unfeeling paragraph (as he reported it) from the Oxford
paper, the sudden calamity which so soon turned all our friend’s
happiness into misery. In time I have no doubt the usual lenitives of every
distress among us must have their due influence in restoring him to
himself—at present, of course, he must be left entirely to the working of
his own feelings. The effect which this news produced in both was, I need not
say, such as all Nicoll’s friends will easily
imagine. For myself I heard, in the
| A FRIEND’S DEATH | 109 |
“I have surely dreamed of writing you a long letter about ten days ago, for I remember the very words in which I communicated to you ——’s death. He died of two days’ illness—a scarlet-fever, much exacerbated, I am grieved to add, by the life of dissipation which he had been leading. All last winter he gambled and drank to excess—he was even tipsy one day beyond decency about three o’clock p.m., when I met him in the street. He used to sit up all night drinking whisky punch with some Aberdeen squires; he was fortunate at the dice, but it drew him both into bad company and bad habits over and above the thing itself. All this entre nous, —— was at bottom a good, honest soul —very affectionate in his temper, and deserves to be lamented by all his friends.
“Hamilton, you
may have observed in the papers, has at length served himself heir general to
Sir Robert H. of Preston, who
commanded the Covenanting army at Bothwell Bridge, and is now
| 110 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
